Echoes

I had ambition not only to go farther than anyone had done before, but as far as it was possible for man to go.

I whose ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?

The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

In prosecuting these discoveries, the dangers we are exposed to are obvious, but I rejoice that we are chosen to confront them.

I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

With Heaven's aid I have conquered for you a huge empire. But my life was too short to achieve the conquest of the world. That task is left for you.

God has given to man no sharper spur to victory than contempt of death.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security.

Through hardship to the stars.

Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond them, sunk in a scrambling commercialism; heedless of the higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves only with the wants of our bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of question, what China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world.

The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find.

Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.

For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say "Farewell." Is a new world coming? We welcome it — and we will bend it to the hopes of man.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement and success have no meaning.